(The Nationalist, 16 May 2003)
‘The outcome is not in doubt’, wrote Strobe Talbott, a columnist in Newsweek magazine, and later an adviser to President Bill Clinton. He was writing in 1980 about the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR on Christmas Day 1979, and he meant that the Soviet Union would win. It seemed like a reasonable expectation: how could hill tribesmen, disunited, and armed only with ancient rifles, stand up against a nuclear superpower? Some ten years later, it was clear that the Soviet Union had lost the war; it withdrew its forces, and shortly thereafter the USSR collapsed.
I wonder if the USA, as it went into Viet-Nam in the Sixties, think the outcome was in doubt. But it, too, was defeated, and it left, humiliated.
Military victory for Anglo-American forces in Iraq now seems an outcome not in doubt. But what about the aftermath? What kind of relationships will victory leave behind? What does the invasion say to Third World countries, but that the West will use its military power, with or without UN authorization, to impose its will on others? Does it not say to the Palestinians, for instance, whose unjust treatment by the Israelis, supported by the Americans, is at the heart of the Middle East problem, that they need not look West for redress of their grievances, because the West will serve first the interests of its political and economic hegemony?
A better way of dealing with the anger and hatred towards the West in much of the Middle East would be to remove the injustices that fuel it. People will continue to stage 11 September-style attacks, and to smuggle anthrax and ricin into our countries, because we cannot stop them. Neither can we claim the moral high ground when we show so clearly that we are ready to use force in wars of aggression when it suits us.
If we want peace, we must work for justice, because there can be no peace without it. We need to address issues, such as the plight of the Palestinians, on the basis of justice and respect for their humanity, not as pawns in a power game.
Since 1945, there have been 240 wars in the world. Injustice provokes wars. Wars feed on each other. Aggression invites retaliation. “Victory” in Iraq will be the trigger of more wars in the future. That outcome is not in doubt.